The Norwegian artist Eilif Peterssen drawn by Christian Krohg; 1884 or earlier.
Hjalmar Eilif Emanuel Peterssen (September 4, 1852 in Christiania - December 29, 1928 in Lysaker) was a Norwegian painter.
Hjalmar Eilif Emanuel Peterssen was born in Christiania, now Oslo, Norway. He grew up in the neighborhood of Hegdehaugen in the district of Frogner.
Eilif Peterssen was first married in 1879 to Inger Birgitte Cecilie Nicoline Bache Ravn (1850-1882), a daughter of the court marshal, Major General Johan Georg Boll Gram (1809-1873). After his wife died, he married for the second time in 1888 to Frederikke Magdalene (“Magda”) Kielland (1855-1931), daughter of Lieutenant Commander Jacob Kielland (1825-1889).
He attended the Johan Fredrik Eckersberg School of Painting in Oslo in 1869. In 1871 he left Oslo to study at the Art Academy in Copenhagen. Later that year he moved to Karlsruhe, where he was a student of Ludwig des Coudres and Wilhelm Riefstahl at Die Grossherzoglische Kunstschule . In the fall of 1873 Peterssen travelled to Munich where he got Wilhelm von Diez as a teacher. In Munich Peterssen was partly a pupil of Franz von Lenbach as well and he got to know other famous artists like Arnold Böcklin and Karl von Piloty.
Peterssen made his breakthrough as a painter in Munich with the history painting Christian II signs the death sentence of Torben Oxe (1876) which was acquired by the Verbindung für historische Kunst in Stuttgart. In Munich he also painted one of his biggest paintings, the altarpiece The Crucifixion (disappeared) for the Johannes church in Oslo. Later he was to paint 9 more altarpieces and a church decoration,The Ascension (1908-1909) in the Ullern church in Oslo.
Peterssen is famous also for his portraits. In Munich he painted some of his best portraits, of artist friends such as Harriet Backer and Hans Heyerdahl and of the German painters Anton Windmaier and Adolf Lier . He painted the 19 year old Anna_Reuss_of_Köstritz at the Schleiz palace in Gera in 1878.
Peterssen was influenced by the brownish palette of the Munich painting. However Peterssen was soon to adopt the increawingly popular En plein air style when he traveled to Italy in 1879. He visited Sora in 1880 together with the Danish painter Peder Severin Krøyer, and in this mountain village he painted his great naturalistic work Siesta in an osteria in Sora. A sharp realism is characteristic of his big canvas Piazza Montanara (1883) painted in Rome.
After the death of his first wife Nicoline in 1882, Peterssen visited Skagen in Denmark together with a group of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian artist friends, among them P.S. Krøyer, Michael and Anna Ancher, Christian Krohg and Oscar Bjørck in the summer of 1883. At Skagen, Peterssen painted some of his first evocative landscapes, such as Summer Evening at Skagen (1883). In the summer of 1884 Peterssen stayed at Sandø, a small island in the Oslofjord, where he painted several versions of Summer Evening, Sandø. These paintings with a contemplative woman sitting in the foreground would influence the famous Norwegian painter Edvard Munch in his later “Melancholy” paintings.
During a visit to Venice in 1885 together with the Norwegian painter Frits Thaulow, Peterssen painted some of his most impressionistic paintings, like Canal Grande and From Riva degli Schiavoni. These paintings are clearly influenced by French painters, particularly Manet and Monet. But it was on his return to Norway in 1886 that Peterssen painted his most famous evocative landscapes Summer Evening and Nocturne (1887). Summer Evening has been shown in many exhibitions abroad, among them the great “Northern Light” exhibition in America in 1982-1983.
Peterssen continued to paint portraits of famous Norwegians, among them authors Alexander Kielland (1887) (whose cousin Magda he married in 1888), Arne Garborg (1894) and Henrik Ibsen (1895), whom he had painted as early as 1875. He also made a portrait of the well-known composer Edvard Grieg in 1893. Peterssen made a success at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889 with Salmon fishermen at Nesøya, a painting combining the evocative and the naturalistic painting style. This was followed by landscape paintings and motifs of salmon fishermen at Jæren in the southern part of Norway where Peterssen stayed in the summertime in the small village of Sele. During the 1890s Peterssen made several paintings influenced by impressionism, among them the most important is Sunshine, Kalvøya (Magda sewing) (1891). This painting made the Swedish art critic Erik Wettergren compare Peterssen with the French impressionist Berthe Morisot. Another impressionist painting is From Akershus (1893).
Eilif Peterssen made several trips to France and Italy. In 1896 he went to Arques-la-Bataille in Normandy, where he painted several landscapes, and from France he went together with his family to Rome in 1897. In 1903 Peterssen again visited Italy and in Rapallo near Genova he painted the impressionist motif Winter in the South (Washerwomen in Rapallo). During the dissolution of Union between Sweden and Norway in 1905, Peterssen was commissioned to design the new coat of arms of Norway.
Inspired by Symbolist and Pre-Raphaelite art Peterssen painted a series of pictures with motifs from a mediaeval French legend, Gujamar’s Song (1905-1907) for the publisher William Nygaard, and four years later another series of paintings based on a Norwegian folk song, Rikeball and the Proud Gudbjørg (1911) for the shipping magnate Jørgen B. Stang.
In his later years Peterssen travelled all over Norway to paint landscapes. He made several visits to Skogstad in Valdres, where he was particularly inspired by the great mountain landscape. In 1920-21 he made his last travel abroad to Cagnes and St. Paul in Provence where he painted several landscapes of the small villages on the hills between Nice and Cannes.
![Oda Krohg, née Othilia Pauline Christine Lasson (11 June 1860 – 19 October 1935) was a Norwegian painter, and the wife of her teacher and colleague Christian Krohg.
Having little formal art education, she quickly absorbed the knowledge of the artistic environment she was a part of. Her debut was in 1886 with Ved Kristianiafjorden (Japansk lykt) («By the Oslofjord (Japanese lantern)»), which now is stored in the National Gallery of Norway. Her first years as an artist are seen as an example of new Romantic painting. Her later portrait works make another, more robust impression.
She was the second daughter of public attorney Christian Lasson and Alexandra von Munthe av Morgenstierne. Her maternal grandmother was a Russian princess. She grew up in a liberal-conservative household, along with eight sisters and two brothers. Her brother Per Lasson became a noted composer and her sister Caroline Bokken Lasson a singer and writer.
In 1881 she married the businessman Jørgen Engelhardt (1852–1921), with whom she had two children. She split from Engelhardt in 1883, and divorced him in 1888. In 1885 she became a student of Erik Werenskiold and Christian Krohg, the latter she would marry in October 1888. In 1885, their daughter Nana was born, and in 1889, their son Per, who also would be a known painter. In the period 1901–1909, the family lived in Paris.
Oda was also a central figure in the anti-culture movement of the Christiania Bohemians («Kristiania-bohemen») in the 1880s and 1890s. Her public image as the “Bohemian Princess” has to some extent obscured the impression of a competent painter. In Edvard Munch’s etching kafeinteriør (1893), Oda is surrounded by bohemians and people close to them: Munch, Christian Krohg, Jappe Nilssen, Hans Jæger, Gunnar Heiberg and Jørgen Engelhardt.[2] Oda is said to have had affairs with all of these men apart from Munch. In his book Syk Kjærlihet (“Diseased Love”, 1893), Hans Jæger describes a love triangle where he was strongly in love with a woman who was to marry a painter. Oda is said to have been the model for the woman, and the book describes the relation between Jæger, Oda and Christian during the summer and autumn of 1888.
In the 1890s the Krohgs moved to Berlin. During a quarrel with August Strindberg, who became provoked when Oda tuned his guitar in front of the guests at a party at Strindberg’s favorite bar, “Zum Schwarzen Ferkel”, the dramatist Gunnar Heiberg defended her. She and Heiberg soon fell in love and in 1897, she took one of her children, her son Per, and moved to Paris with Heiberg. Her husband took a position as an art instructor at Académie Colarossi in Paris not long thereafter and Oda obtained an artist’s studio in Montparnasse. Within a short time she became acquainted with some of the leading artists in the city, including Henri Matisse. In 1903 she showed at the Salon de Paris, and a year later held her first exhibition at the Salon d’Automne, where she continued to be regularly involved until 1909. During this time she was in a relationship with the poet and art critic Jappe Nilssen. Oda separated from him and returned to her husband. A little while later they returned to Oslo.
Despite her wish to become a writer, she published very little during her lifetime.
Her life is described in Ketil Bjørnstad’s novel Oda! (1983). She is buried at the National Cemetery (Æreslund) at Vår Frelsers gravlund in Oslo.
Oda Krohg is known for her landscapes, among them Ved Kristianiafjorden (Japansk lykt) and Ved engen (Kinesisk lykt) («On the meadow (Chinese lantern)», 1889) and other works like En abonnent på Aftenposten («A subscriber to the Evening Post», 1887), Fra festen («From the party», 1892) and Rouge et Noir (1912) and the brave Christian Krohg på Karl Johan («Christian Krohg at Karl Johansgate», 1912). She also painted portraits of, among others, Aasta Hansteen, Ivar Arosenius, Gunnar Heiberg, Johanne Dybwad and Christian Krohg.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/5b4afd57e13c2e49b93c4c34948fa5c2/tumblr_mhn1nu8TpB1rsuqnfo1_500.jpg)
